Apple pulls pair of troublesome OS updates

updated 09:35 pm EST, Mon November 19, 2012

by MacNN Staff

Models affected include nearly the entire Macintosh line

A pair of updates for Apple's products have both been pulled in the span of less than a week. Late last week, the App Store software update for OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion to 10.8.2 was removed for the new Mac Mini, iMac, and 13-inch Retina display MacBook Pro. Additionally, the "Mid-2012 MacBook Air/MacBook Pro Update 2.0" has been pulled due to problems reported by users.

The late-2012 Mac Mini shipped from the manufacturer with 10.8.1, and requires a custom update if the 10.8.2 upgrade is desired. An attempt to use the manual 10.8.2 updater is greeted with: "Error: OS X Update can't be installed on this disk. This volume does not meet the requirements for this update." No official Apple announcement has been made about the retraction. Some recent software releases, such as the update to iPhoto, require 10.8.2 to function.

The MacBook Pro Update 2.0 was also removed, with reported bugs such as failure to eject optical disks, keychain access problems, and permission issues for some users. A clean install of OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion obviously fixes the problem, but without the display and additional USB 3.0 compatibility improvements promised by the update. Some users who chose to reinstall the update following a clean OS install are no longer having the issues before Apple pulled the update.

MacNN has spoken to an Apple store support employee regarding the retracted updates who said that the engineering department in Cupertino had made the fixes a "high priority item" but declined to elaborate on specific fixes. Our contact reported that "I don't have an ETA, but I know they are trying to complete updates for both problems before the Thanksgiving break."

I really wish that they could improve on their iOS6 as well. Yes they released a quick fix the Monday after releasing iOS6.0 with iOS6.01 but looking at Apple forums there is a lot of people experiencing nothing but trouble with the 6.01 release but I have not seem anything from Apple on what might be causing the trouble.

iOS 6.0.1 is working flawlessly for me on my iPhone 4. Perhaps I'm just not using the areas that people are having "problems" with.

Looking at forums (this one included) is a really BAD way of telling if there is a legitimate problem with something or not, for two reasons:

1. Most of the users are probably talking about an issue when in fact it is something they didn't do (or did when they shouldn't have). IME, about 90 percent of forum complaints end up being user error.

2. Very few people come on to say "no problems here! Everything's great!", giving the false impression that "everybody" is having the problem when in fact it's probably not everyone.

That's not to say that forums can't be mega-useful in identifying the difference between "it's just you" and "yeah, this is a reproducible bug." Or in tracking down a workaround or solution -- just saying that MOST of the time the "issue" ends up not being what the user reporting it thought it was.

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